Category Archives: Media and Culture

When I read this article, I couldn’t help but think about Veruca Salt. More specifically, the song the Oompa Loompas sang when they had to go fish her out of the furnace (yes, I’m talking about the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory movie).

Who do you blame when your kid is a brat
Pampered and spoiled like a siamese cat
Blaming the kids is a lie and a shame
You know exactly who’s to blame

The mother and the father

I’ve always loved that bit because, for once, someone is telling it like it is. Spoiled brat kids are products of their parents. Plain and simple.

But what about those kids who have good and generous parents yet still turn out to be unkind and rude?

Dr. Richard A. Freidman asserts that it is possible for good parents to have bad children.

But while I do not mean to let bad parents off the hook — sadly, there are all too many of them, from malignant to merely apathetic — the fact remains that perfectly decent parents can produce toxic children.

…

Not everyone is going to turn out to be brilliant — any more than everyone will turn out nice and loving. And that is not necessarily because of parental failure or an impoverished environment. It is because everyday character traits, like all human behavior, have hard-wired and genetic components that cannot be molded entirely by the best environment, let alone the best psychotherapists.

“The central pitch of any child psychiatrist now is that the illness is often in the child and that the family responses may aggravate the scene but not wholly create it,” said my colleague Dr. Theodore Shapiro, a child psychiatrist at Weill Cornell Medical College. “The era of ‘there are no bad children, only bad parents’ is gone.”

I recall one patient who told me that she had given up trying to have a relationship with her 24-year-old daughter, whose relentless criticism she could no longer bear. “I still love and miss her,” she said sadly. “But I really don’t like her.”

For better or worse, parents have limited power to influence their children. That is why they should not be so fast to take all the blame — or credit — for everything that their children become.

I can agree with him, to an extent. Some people are hardwired to be one way or another. However, I don’t believe that people have to stay that way. And I do believe that environment (the way you are raised, the things you experience and/or see) has a lot to do with the choices you make.

And ultimately, behavior is a choice. And everyone makes choices based on their own worldview that has been shaped by both nature and nurture.

My fear is that an article like this is going to further open the door for parents to stop parenting because “she’s just that way.” It provides an easy way out of tough situations for parents who do have difficult children.

I’d never heard of Hungry Girl before, but after this article in the NYTimes, I’m definitely intrigued.

Ms. Lillien has been criticized for advocating a path to weight loss that is slippery with Cool Whip Lite, onion soup mix and other foods of debatable nutritional value. She says that the recipes reflect the reality of what American women eat, sometimes despite their best intentions. “I live in the middle of the supermarket,” she said: the aisles that are stocked with packaged processed foods, many of which are loathed by locavores and nutritionists alike.

She says she also encourages her readers to eat soy products, almond milk, fiber cereals and butternut squash. Although Ms. Lillien herself espouses conscious eating, Hungry Girl ducks the issue on matters like seasonality, carbon footprint, organic status and saturated fat. She cares about just two things: How does it taste? And how much of it can I have?

Where do I sign up?

The mayor of San Francisco has declared a city-wide ban on sugary drinks:

Coca-Cola is out, and soy milk is now part of San Francisco’s official city policy.

Under an executive order from Mayor Gavin Newsom, Coke, Pepsi and Fanta Orange are no longer allowed in vending machines on city property, although their diet counterparts are – up to a point.

Newsom’s directive, issued in April but whose practical impacts are starting to be felt now, bars calorically sweetened beverages from vending machines on city property.

That includes non-diet sodas, sports drinks and artificially sweetened water. Juice must be 100 percent fruit or vegetable juice with no added sweeteners. Diet sodas can be no more than 25 percent of the items offered, the directive says.

There should be “ample choices” of water, “soy milk, rice milk and other similar dairy or non dairy milk,” says the directive, which also covers fat and sugar content in vending machine snacks.

In theory, this is a good idea. I’m personally trying to cut soda out of my life in favor of water or Steaz. But this is a personal choice that I have made for myself. I don’t want or need the government dictating what I should or shouldn’t be drinking.

What do you think? Are these kinds of guidelines good or bad?

I just read about a study that concluded that what we touch – its feel, texture, weight, etc. – influences how we make decisions.

That seems like a no-brainer of course. But I find it interesting how the columnist related this idea to the progress of technology and e-book readers. Especially since I keep flirting with the idea of buying a Nook.

The tactile experience of reading is also crucial to my reading pleasure. Holding a book compares to nothing short of a baby’s contact with his favorite blankie. Consistent with Ackerman’s findings, a hardback is superior to a paperback precisely because it is more solid, weightier and, therefore, more permanent, more important, better.

But might touching words on a printed page vs. reading them online also be relevant to one’s comprehension and judgment? Are words consigned to tangible and tactually rewarding paper more likely to register in our minds than those that float on hard tablets subject to the blinkering life span of a battery or extinguishable by a bolt of lightning?

This is the very core of the conflict I feel when I consider switching mediums. I love technology. LOVE. IT. I love buttons and gadgets and adore the sensation of playing with “futuristic” toys.

But at the same time, I love books. I love to feel the pages under my fingertips. New car smell has nothing on new book smell. And there’s something almost primal in the idea that the written word has been around throughout the ages. Moving from ink on paper to a purely digital format is a disconnect from our history – and from one another.

Part of the pleasure of a real, snail-mail letter isn’t only the effort involved in putting words to parchment but also the fact of the letter writer having touched the same piece of paper. The exchange isn’t only an act of communication but one of intimacy.

We are all part of this immense digital experiment and we know not where it leads. But the tactile vacuum inherent in the medium can’t be insignificant. Offhand, it seems that our technologically enhanced communications, though miraculous in speed and access, have become harder and rougher with the medium.

Reaching out and touching someone has become easier than ever, but we never really make contact. Hunkered over our keyboards, tapping and clicking messages to the vast Other, we have become a universe of lone rangers keeping the company of our own certitude.

I think perhaps I’ll pass on the Nook – for now.

We all know that we’ve been caught in the middle of a recession. Unemployment rates have sky-rocketed. And more than a million unemployed workers are going to be losing their benefits this month because the Senate filibustered the latest extension bill.

So why is there an article in the NY Times that says factories can’t find skilled workers?

Because they fired everybody and installed more sophisticated machinery. Now, the lower-skilled workers who were employed by these companies can’t perform the job functions required.

So we have unemployed workers and job openings. But these workers can’t perform the job as required.

Was this perhaps the most boneheaded thing these factories could have done?

Would it not have made more sense to lay off their workers with the intention of hiring those same workers back when the economy improved? Instead, these companies have screwed themselves and the people who want to work for them for the sake of “progress.”

How much progress can you make when you can’t manufacture anything with your fancy new machines because you have no one to run them?

*As an aside, I was fortunate enough to find a job 4 weeks before my unemployment ran out. I fully understand the plight of the unemployed.

Legislation is being sponsored that would make it a felony to take a girl out of the United States to have her genitals mutilated.

Female genital mutilation involves partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons. This heinous practice is common in parts of Africa, the Middle East, and Asia because of various religious and cultural ideals.

The practice makes me ill to think about. These poor girls – children, as young as toddlers – are basically tortured by these procedures. And parents allow it to happen because “they’re supposed to.”

Kudos to Representatives Joseph Crowley of New York and Mary Bono Mack of California for sponsoring this bill that would punish violators with fines and a five-year prison term.

Hopefully this will be a step closer to giving women the strength and courage to use their voice to defend themselves with.

This article in the Chicago Sun-Times really really ticks me off.

Associate Judge Helen Rozenberg held Jennifer LaPenta, who was attending a hearing in a friend’s case, in contempt of court for wearing a T-shirt that read: “I have the p—-, so I make the rules.”

The judge asked LaPenta, 19, if she thought her shirt was appropriate.

LaPenta said she told the judge that it would have been inappropriate if she had been the defendant.

And she’s absolutely right… but even then, should you really get sent to jail for a t-shirt slogan? Hell, at least she was wearing clothes! I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure that since the clothes you wear the message you’re saying to people, you should be covered by the 1st amendment. And going to jail for it? I can understand the judge sending her out of the courtroom, if she was offended. After all, it is her courtroom. But holding her in contempt of court was going way way too far.

And for the record, I really want one of those shirts! (Not that I’d ever have the balls to wear it)